Time Passes
by Turtle Kid the Woolgatherer
Summary: One-Shot. Years go by. Rapunzel is still around. Canon relationships, mentions of non-canon relationships and OCs. WARNING: attempted suicides


Disclaimer: I do not own Tangled. This story is being written for fun, and I make no profit off of it.

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At first no one realizes that there is an issue. Rapunzel continues to grow and change from a teenager into an adult, and eventually she and Eugene have their first child together. It is a joyous occasion, with trumpets and streamers and floating candles.

More years pass, and more children come. And, though Rapunzel still looks young, it is not so strange—the queen also ages well, the people tell each other. Rapunzel simply takes after her in that respect.

But when she is forty-five and still hasn't aged past her twentieth year, people begin to question it. By the time she is fifty, everyone is sure it is magic.

Events happen, things that seem so important at the moment, but as time goes on they seem less so. Some things stick around for a long time. Pascal and Maximus passing is such a blow that she weeps for days, though their descendants stick around for years to come. Her own daughter dying is also a blow, and she again weeps for days. Then her third grandson dies, and her fifth granddaughter. Weeping.

The family mourns.

The family loves.

Time passes.

And Eugene is old, so very old, and is so apologetic about leaving her, and all she can do is cry, because she's not even sure when (or if) she'll be able to join him.

He knows this, and tries to comfort her.

"Dearheart," he says, "we will meet again." He clutches her hand with his. She looks at his gnarled, shaking fingers and almost cries for the third time that day. He is so weak. "I'll see you on the other side."

She's still young at this point. Only seventy-seven. She finds it hard, but she believes him.

He passes away while they're both sleeping, her curled form pressed against him. She wakes before sunrise because it is so cold, and screams out her anguish. She thought she'd be prepared, after all the men from the Snuggly Duckling passed away, but she isn't.

She is queen for a long, long time. Sometimes she passes the title to one of her descendants and goes on an adventure. A few times she even finds love in unexpected places, though none compare to her Flynn (she does not try—that would be cruel to both Flynn and her new love).

Always she returns to serve as queen once again. She returns home.

More years passed. Her own people know of her origin story as legend but little more, in awe and a little fearful of talking to her. Her family look upon her as a relic, sometimes sneering when she passes, though most are respectful where they know she can see. "Her ideas are just a little outdated," they whisper to each other, either not knowing or not caring that she could hear. She loves her descendants, truly—but sometimes she wants to shake them. Yes, she is old. But she has so much experience, so much to offer. Isn't that worth something? She has seen so many wars and battles, so many political machinations and emotional ups and downs. She once had knowledge, but now she has wisdom. Only a few see it, most struck as they are by how she speaks and dresses.

Sometimes, she gives into despair.

Once, when she was so young and innocent about the world, Rapunzel had no notion of suicide. Gothel had made sure her books didn't mention anything too upsetting or interesting, except for a few books on battles and wars that were "accidentally" purchased and handed over for Rapunzel to read. But still these books did not mention suicide. The closest the books came was one instance where a man was so shamed that he goaded the enemy into attacking him, though he was unarmed.

Now, Rapunzel knows what suicide is very personally. She knows what can drive someone to it, what it feels like. She had not come up with committing suicide by herself, although after much longer it would have likely come to mind. She was still somewhat pure, when the thought occurred to her.

But there is a battle she fought in, and was struck down. She was in shock, at first, and then she was so blissfully happy that she would be able to join her loved ones in the afterlife. There was no one there to sing the song that would awaken the magic inside of her. No one even knew the song anymore—she kept it to herself. She closed her eyes with a bloody smile.

She woke up in the healers tent, and wept for the first time in many years.

After that she went on another journey, telling her people that if she was not back in thirty years that she was dead. She came back after twenty-seven years with strange plants and stranger stories, and never told anyone that she spent many of those years killing herself in all the ways she could think of.

She cannot die by age, nor by exhaustion, nor weapon, nor hunger, nor any known means.

And so Rapunzel serves as her kingdom's queen, until even she can no longer keep the kingdom together. It is not overrun—its time simply passes, and people move away. She doesn't wait for the boarder countries (which have changed, though they are still on fairly good terms—she is seen as something of a goddess at this point, and her temper, though extremely slow to come, is something which no one wants to incite) to fight over her land, and instead hands out the land at the edges that are too large for her shrinking army to patrol. The boarders become smaller and smaller. Her family spreads out and moves away, joining other courts or giving up their titles, until it is only her in her castle with the small town and fields surrounding it.

Then even this is gone. She hands away the last of her land, accepts the jewels and precious stones for her land, and leaves. Her castle stands for thousands of years more, as the place where the three surrounding country's borders intersect. She visits a few times, until even the foundations have been worn away by time.

She wanders. She eats and sleeps—or doesn't eat nor sleep, as she chooses. Sometimes she lives, sometimes she just exists as a body with an aching soul. She has no home. She has no people.

Ages pass. The world changes. She sees villages and cities, she sees horses and cars and ships. She sees planets and stars. She has other loves, but no other families. She never forgets, not really, but so much time passes that her beginning is a blur, there and gone in a moment.

Her clearest memory is that she once loved a man and a place and the people with so much of herself that she can never be whole again, until death comes. She can remember little else, but she remembers that. She feels that death with never come, and cannot bring herself to care any more. She simply goes where she goes, and whatever happens, happens. She only wishes for death because she has wished for it for so long that to not wish for it is impossible.

She is on a distant planet when the sun that gave her life finally expires.

And Rapunzel, so old in spirit and young in body, dies and turns to dust.


End file.
